Moral Health

Universal Health Care would perhaps be a wonderful idea in a society in which people took full responsibility for their lives to the best of their ability.  However, the idea is disastrous one in a society in which the vast the majority of people are utterly creative in excusing themselves for being responsible for their own behavior.   If there is one thing more than any other that has come to characterize the American society it is that no one seems to be at fault for anything bad that happens to her or his life.  The idea has such a grip upon the way we think that commonsense itself seems to have gone by the wayside. 

Lest there be any misunderstanding, there are lots of ways in which people have been wronged owing to no fault whatsoever of their own.  The case of tobacco stands as a stunning example of the way in which monetary gain was allowed to take precedent of the well-being of the lives of individuals. 

By contrast, the inordinate credit card debt that most people have can only be explained by the failure of individuals to act responsibly.  This point holds even if one acknowledges, as I do, that credit card companies are often duplicitous.  This is because the duplicity pertains to the ways in which the companies raises rates and charge fees.  The duplicity has nothing at all to do with people spending more money than they actually have.  Hence, the explanation for the massive credit card debt that so many people have has nothing at all to do with credit card companies being duplicitous.  Rather, the explanation for that has everything to do with the fact that the very people who claim to be entitled to the freedom to do as they please are the very same people who act most irresponsibly in using their credit cards.  After all, it is an indisputable fact that the interest rate does not matter if one generally pays one’s bill off on-time. 

Universal Health Care is about the government picking up the tab for the health care of the citizens of the nation.  But there is no independent institution, which goes by name The Government, that has its own income.  The Government is funded by the people.  Accordingly, I ask the following question:

Why should we be held collectively responsible financially for the health care of our fellow citizens if we are not entitled to be collectively responsible for the actual health of our fellow citizens?

I understand, of course, it would be horrendous to have skinny people running around and pointing to heavy-set people and yelling at them: “Lose some weight”.  Just so, it is irresponsible and morally wrong to have The Government pay for the health care of Americans while not requiring that Americans do anything to ensure that they are in a healthy or, at any rate, healthier state. 

Here is a very simple principle.  

I should not be obligated to be responsible for you if you do not exercise sufficient responsibility for yourself. 

With the exception of parents and their children this principle applies across the board. 

It will be noticed that I have not in effect argued against Universal Health Care.  Rather, I made two important points.  One is that there is nothing called the The Government which has its own resources to provide health care to Americans; rather, such health care is something to which taxpayers must contribute.  The second point is that it is morally wrong to put this burden upon taxpayers and none upon those whose health care will be paid for to care for themselves. 

I find it terribly revealing the President Obama has not drawn attention to the responsibility of citizens to conduct their lives in a healthy way.  On my view, citizens who do not should have to pay more taxes. 

It may be thought by some that I am in no position to complain since I have been blessed to be rather thin.  Further, some may suggests that my complaining reveals a deep, deep callousness on my part.  Quickly, my response to the first point is that I walk more than most people would ever imagine.  What is more, I take the steps just about everywhere I go.  In the last 10 years, for example, I have not once taken an elevator to my 5th floor office.  As to the second point, suffice it to say that the choice is not between my level of fitness or being entirely unfit.  There is quite an array of options in between. 

I distinguish between wallowing in the absence of fitness and being optimally fit.  Far too many Americans wallow in the absence of fitness.  And I hold that they should not get a free ride.  I hold that it is morally unfair to obligate me to care for their health problems. 

There is a thin, but ever so real, line between being callous and holding others morally responsible for their own behavior, including their health.  The callous person is indifferent to how a person should turn out to be unhealthy.  I am not that person at all.  There are all sorts of illnesses that strike people regardless of how well they take care of themselves.  Just so, individuals should not expect me to respect their freedom to do as they please with their lives and also to contribute to their health care, though they have made little or no effort to attend to their health. 

I would rather that there be an outright revolution in America than that we should accede to President Barack Obama’s myopic conception of universal health care—one that ignores the morality that people first have a moral obligation to promote their own health before they have any entitlement to the support of the American people.  But for the people, The Government does not exist.  Time and time again, President Obama passes blithely over this truth. 

Is the burqa a symbol of profound female modesty? Female modesty, of course, is valued by all three of the monotheistic traditions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. There is, in fact, a strong positive correlation between the more conservative the practice and a greater demand for female modesty. This insistence upon female modesty is tied to the view that women and men differ in ways that require women to be careful not to present themselves in public in sexually provocative ways. Is the burqa indeed an embodiment of that idea?

The President of France, Nicolas Sarkozy, does not think so; and he wishes to have the wearing of the burqa in France legally forbidden. To see that Sarkozy is right, it suffices to compare the difference between the hijab and burqa. The hijab covers what is traditionally considered to be one of the most significant aspects of a woman’s appearance, namely her hair. However, the hijab covers a woman’s hair without denying her an actual identity in public space. Indeed the hijab allows for considerable self-expression. For example, the hijab may match the color of the Muslim woman’s attire.

With the burqa, on the other hand, what we get is something akin to American Slavery, because a woman wearing a burqa is in effect the denial of the woman’s identity in public space. This is because the face is entirely covered allowing only an opening for the wearer’s eyes. If I am right in claiming that the burqa denies Muslim woman an identity in public space, then an article that recently appeared in the French newspaper Le Monde (22 June 2009) has gotten things quite wrong.

The article, written in favor of women in France wearing the burqa is entitled “En France, la liberté pour tous, sauf pour les musulmans!” The essence of the argument of the article is that no one forces Muslim women in France to wear the burqa; rather, it is of their own free will that they do so. Alas, the simple truth of the matter is that even though no one forces a person to engage in a given form of behavior, it may nonetheless be true that the person engages in that behavior for reasons that are not morally salutary.

After decades of American Slavery, many blacks thought it “natural” to act in a subservient manner towards whites. These blacks have been traditionally referred to as Uncle Toms. These subservient blacks subordinated themselves to whites without anyone forcing them to do so. Yet, there behavior was clearly open to strong moral criticism. The point here, of course, is that behavior in which a person chooses to engage without being coerced may nonetheless have at its foundation a wealth of morally objectionable behavior.

The tradition of the burqa is akin to the “natural attitude of subordination” that was characteristic of many blacks during American Slavery. Wearing a burqa is rather like an Uncle Tom, in that in either case one wrongly delights in one’s inferiority. And just as the attitude of black subordination was imposed by whites in order to affirm the supremacy of whites, the tradition of the burqa was imposed by Muslim men upon Muslim women in order to affirm the superiority of the men over the women.

The burqa effectively treats Muslim women as property by denying them an identity in public. Indeed, the burqa forces Muslim women to have a lower status in public than the pet dog; for even the pet dog is allowed to have an identity in public.

Needless to say, our face and our actions are the two most important aspects of our identity. When we have engaged in morally obnoxious behavior, we typically hide our face from the camera. By contrast, when we have exhibited morally honorable behavior, we want our face to be associated with that behavior—not the face of some other person.

A woman’s hiding her face in public is not an expression of modesty. The proof of this is none other than the attire of the Catholic nun.

The habit which a nun wears is the very opposite of salacious attire. Any man who looks with sexual desire at a woman who is a nun and is so attired is a man who is psychologically deranged. Thus, the nun and her attire stand as proof par excellence that a woman can maintain unquestionable modesty in public and be accorded such respect by all men around her without having to hide her face.

For Muslim women, the hijab more than suffices to accord Muslim women the unquestionably standing of modesty and respect by men. Every man who sees a woman wearing the hijab readily understands the moral significance of her doing so and conducts himself accordingly.

We all know that there was a time when marriage effectively made women the property of men. Indeed, there was a time when a husband could not be officially charged with raping his wife, though he had systematically forced her to have sex with him against her will. The burqa is none other than an artifact of the ideology that women are the property of men. This is why President Nicolas Sarkozy is absolutely right, on both moral and political grounds, in opposing the burqa and thus rejecting the practice of wearing the burqa in the Republic of France.

Sarkozy’s own words are as follows:

La burqa n’est pas la bienvenue sur le territoire de la Republique

President Sarkozy has rightly observed that the problem with the burqa has nothing at all to do with the religion of Islam and everything to do with the very dignity of women—Muslim women, in particular. Freedom of religion is not the right to undermine the dignity of the adherents of a religion, be they women or men. It is this extraordinarily profound insight that Monsieur Nicolas Sarkozy, le Président de la République Française, so majestically grasps.

Tout simple, nous devrions nous appuyer sur la liberty afin d’affirmer également la dignité de chaque personne, quelque soit son sexe ou la couleur de sa peau or bien son culte religieux. Il va sans dire que le port de la burqa est complètement incompatible avec une telle conception de la liberté.

Nothing justifies negotiating with evil.  President Obama does not grasp this truth.  The State of Israel does.  Not even Obama’s enormous charm gives him an advantage with evil.  And if there is one thing more than any other that President Ahmadinejad has made unequivocally clear it is that he has no interest whatsoever in accommodating Obama, but only in conquering him.  And Obama’s now-famous speech in Egypt at Cairo University‑‑“A New Beginning”‑‑ makes it abundantly clear that he is woefully naïve in his supposition that the only thing folks like Ahmadinejad need in order to change is for the United States to sincerely extend the “olive branch” as they say. 

The very idea of extending an “olive branch” to a person who denies the reality of American Slavery is simply unthinkable.  If that is so, then has to be equally unacceptable to extend an “olive branch” to anyone who denies the reality of the Holocaust, as is the case with Ahmadinejad.  And this tells us something very disturbing about Obama’s thinking. 

What Ahmadinejad wants is not an “olive branch” from Obama, but the man’s arm so that he (Ahmadinejad) can cut it off. 

It would of course be an absolutely wonderful thing if all the world were interested in peace and if all were willing to engage in a measure of compromise in order achieve that end.  However, the latest events in Iran stand as a most poignant reminder that not everyone is prepared to be so open-minded. 

Today, “Neda’ (not necessarily her real name) was shot in the streets and killed by a pro-Ahmadinejad soldier; and there was not even a symbolic gesture of concern and sorrow on the part of the Ahmadinejad administration.  None at all, though all the world is watching. 

There can be no clearer sign that a person truly has a hardened and evil heart than that the individual is no longer concerned with even the appearances of decency.  It will be recalled that in Plato’s Republic even the unjust man is concerned with appearances. 

But Ahmadinejad’s brutal callousness should not surprise us, since we know that he denies the very reality of the Holocaust. 

I hold a very simple view, namely that evil has but one aim, namely to gain the upper-hand by any means possible. 

There surely are people with whom we should be prepared to negotiate.  But just as surely: there are people with whom only a fool would negotiate.  Wisdom consists in knowing the difference.  Goodwill is one thing; weakness is quite another.  Evil should never have any reason whatsoever to take an instance of the former as a sign of the latter.

Every time I hear of Muslim Arabs committing a suicide attack against a mosque, it is manifestly clear to me that any negotiation with Muslim Arabs who so behave is entirely out of the question.  This would be rather like negotiating with someone whose options for me are to throw me in a lion’s den or in a pit of snakes.  I may die in the end, but I would not give that person the satisfaction me thinking for a moment that he had given me a meaningful choice.  I would not negotiate with evil. 

It is this insight that is at the heart of Socrates’s that a person who is not prepared to die for something cannot live a meaningful life.

In this odd respect, it turns out that greater courage is being shown by evil; for at least those committing suicide -bombings are willing to die for that which they believe in; and this truth gives the side of evil enormous power and leverage against Europe and the United States.

Hitler and Ahmadinejad are two evil individuals.  The sooner this is recognized by the West, the safer the world will be.  The victory of evil lies in the foolish thought on the part of any Western country that it can pull off an extraordinary negotiation with Ahmadinejad that will be beneficial to all—both Ahmadinejad and the West.  This is none other than a form of massive self-deception.  And once more, it would appear that the West is far more self-deceived than Ahmadinejad himself turns out to be.

After all, it was not too long ago when it would have been rather self-evident on the part of all in the West that only a fool would attempt to negotiate with evil.  Alas, the West has fooled itself into thinking that progress is possible by negotiating with evil.  This is a most tragic mistake and President Barack Obama symbolizes the naiveté of entertaining such an idea.

Thursday: Sarkozy & the burqa in France

The city of Bozeman, located in Montana, is forcefully raising a most profound question, namely: To what extent are the social-networking sites to which we belong relevant to the job that we seek to hold?  Here is the obvious: If our behavior on these sites is morally appropriate, then that is surely a good thing; whereas if our behavior on these sites is most inappropriate, then that is a bad thing.  The obvious question to be asked is this: To what extent, if any, is our behavior on social-networking sites relevant to the job we wish to hold?  Equally obvious: it depends on the job and what we do on those sites.

There is another issue at stake, though, namely the following: To what extent if any are human beings rightly understood as being psychologically whole selves?  Can a person be utterly irresponsible and decadent in her or his behavior on (for example) Facebook but, while on the job, be completely responsible and generally measured in just the rights ways? 

The general thought that most of us have is that what a person does in private is not anyone else’s business.  Alas, the very problem with social-networking sites generally is that they do not constitute a private context.  Rather, they are public contexts in which people are free to convey personal—and thus private—information.  Social-networking sites are rather like public sidewalks.  How a person walks down the street and what she or her wears generally tells me a great deal of information about that person. 

So if a person frequently walked down the street so scantily dressed that it as if the individual were in the bedroom preparing to strike a salacious pose before engaging in sex, then that person reveals something rather significant about herself or himself; and if that person applied for a teaching position in elementary school in the neighborhood, I cannot see how one could ignore the person’s frequent style of dress.  As we shall see momentarily, it is just plain foolish to say that how the person frequently dresses while walking down the street has no bearing on her or his ability to be effective in the classroom as a teacher.

Now, suppose that the teaching candidate exclaims—and quite honestly—that she or he would never dress salaciously in the classroom.  Is it relevant that it is only outside of the classroom that the person dresses salaciously outside of the classroom?  Those who claim that it is not relevant are committed to a kind of radical individualism and compartmentalization that cannot be sustained.  A person’s appearances in public contexts that are not affiliated with her or his actual job are fundamentally linked to how we respect that individual during her or his actual job performance.  Or so it is if we are committed to a certain unity of the self. 

For example, if I am a student and I know that Opidopo is given to salacious behavior outside of the classroom, then any given instance of behavior by Opidopo might strike me as salacious.  By contrast, if there is nothing salacious about Opidopo’s public behavior outside of the classroom, then the likelihood of my thinking that a given instance of Opidopo’s behavior in the classroom is salacious drops precipitously. 

If Opidopo has a reputation among students for going to bars and trying to have sex with anyone in the bar, it is simply not possible to expect students to cast this fact aside while interacting with Opidopo in the classroom.  How could they?  If Opidopo stands too close, then it would be perfectly natural for a student to wonder if this might be an expression of sexual interest on Opidopo’s part.

It is an inescapable truth that what we routinely see a person doing in contexts unrelated to a job bears upon how we think about that person’s behavior when he or he is on the job.  Indeed, what we know about a person simply makes this difference.  And it is this truth that is the problem with social-networking sites. 

Because my students know that I move back and forth between France and the United States and that I speak both French and English, they understand perfectly well that I might sometimes blurt out an utterance in French.  Take away that background knowledge, and my occasionally blurting out an utterance in French is incomprehensible, at best, or it will be seen as contrived and pretentious, at worse.

So if on a Facebook page, I posted photos of myself in which I am scantily clothed, it is simply not reasonable to expect my students to be unmindful of this in my interactions with them.  And they would have to be a bit psychologically underdeveloped if they were. 

Of course, it is possible for individuals to do things in private that no one would ever suspect.  This happens all the time.  And in general such behavior is generally no one else’s business.  Alas, it is a mistake to infer from this that private behavior done in public is something that those who behold such behavior should be expected to ignore.  That is not possible for individuals who are psychologically healthy. 

Our assessment of any individual is rightly tied to the facts that we know about a person.  More significantly, if we are psychologically healthy, it is not possible for us to have a pertinent fact about an individual and ignore it.  That would be like knowing that someone in the room is completely healthy and 7 feet tall, and not taking that into account when needs someone to get a book located on a very high shelf.  It would silly and psychologically untenable to intone what in some sense is quite true, namely that a person’s height is no one else’s business. 

One of the most important issues in life pertains to the motivations with which a person behaves.  And the more we know about a person, the more insight we have into the motivations with which a person behaves.  Being mindful of the motivations with which a person is an inextricable part of taking an individual seriously.  If this is right, then we cannot do whatever we please on social-networking sights and claim that it is no one else’s business and, in particular, it is not the business of potential employers.  After all, a constitutive of aspect of taking a person seriously is to be mindful of the motivations with which that individual behaves. 

So insofar as we want to be taken seriously, then we cannot expect people to set aside our behavior on social-networking sites.  It is indeed disingenuous to expect people to do so, precisely because acting with a rich set of motivations is one of the distinguishing features of human beings. 

Now, the City of Bozeman wants applicants to give their passwords to the social-networking sites to which they belong.  I have not argued for or against that.  What I suspect is more appropriate is to inform applicants that the social-networking sites to which they belong will be regularly monitored and to specify the kinds of images that will put the applicant’s job in jeopardy if these images appear on these sites.

Sometimes remarks are indecent no matter what one’s ideological leanings might be.  For instance, no matter what I think about a person’s political views, it would woefully and utterly inappropriate on moral grounds for me to intone, however, jokingly: “You need a good raping in order to put some sense in your head”.  There is nothing that could render that utterance an acceptable joke.  Conservatives need to understand the moral principle here.  Liberals need to understand the moral principle here. 

As we all know, David Letterman joked that baseball slugger Alex Rodriguez “knocked up” Sarah Palin’s daughter during a game at Yankee Stadium.  Two things are worth nothing here.  One is that fact that Letterman himself could have uttered such a tasteless remark.  The other is that such a tasteless remark could have been applauded by the audience.  Together, these two facts reveal a horrendous lack of basic moral decency on the part of both Letterman and his audience.  For reasons that I shall shortly make clear, owing to the deafening silence of feminist groups like NOW my respect for them has entirely evaporated.

Had Letterman’s remarks been about Sarah Palin herself instead of Palin’s daughter, they would still have been crass and tasteless.  But one could argue with some plausibility, perhaps, that being the object of such derisive remarks is the price of being a political figure.  However, there is nothing whatsoever that will excuse Letterman’s making such a horrendous set of remarks about Palin’s daughter. 

We all recall the story of Don Imus, who referred to black women on the women’s basketball team of Rutgers University as “nappy-headed hos”.  And as we all know, Imus lost his job over that despicable remark.

What Letterman said about Palin’s daughter was equally despicable; though, to be sure, the factor of race is absent here.  And just as Imus lost his radio position, Letterman should also lose his position as host of the late night talk show.  If an apology of Imus did not suffice for him to maintain his job, then an apology from Letterman should not suffice.  It was not sufficient for Imus to display deep, deep contrition and to say that he learnt his lesson.  Likewise, it should not be sufficient for Letterman to display contrition and to say that he learnt his lesson.

Part of what it means to have moral principles is to hold everyone equally accountable for the exact same moral behavior.  Murder is wrong; and it is wrong whether it is committed by my child or the neighbor’s child or the stranger’s child. 

Imus was roundly and relentlessly criticized for displaying a deeply inexcusable moral insensibility to black women.  Letterman displayed a deeply inexcusable moral insensibility to all women.  This last observation brings me to NOW.

A flagrant disrespect for women is wrong no matter who displays that disrespect.  I grasp all too that Sarah Palin is not the darling of feminists groups—NOW, in particular.  This, however, should be utterly irrelevant to the considerable ire that they should have over Letterman’s remarks regarding Palin’s daughter.  Insofar as NOW is willing to overlook Letterman’s despicable remarks because, after all, he is indeed a darling of Liberals, then NOW thereby loses my respect. 

I understand as much as anyone the inclination that we have to want to excuse a mistake committed by one of our own against those whom we reject.  This, though, invariably requires that one can point to what at least appears to be a substantive moral difference.  Alas, from the standpoint of purely despicable remarks, there is no substantive moral difference between what Imus said what Letterman said. 

There is no better indication of what the moral character of persons is really like than the moral wrongs that they commit precisely when they can easily get away with committing those wrongs.  Thus, we know something quite important about a man who simply does not refer to women as “bitches”, though he finds himself upon occasion around guys who unthinkingly do so. 

Make no mistake about it: David Letterman knew that his audience would delight in his tasteless remark about Sarah Palin’s daughter.  And this truth points to a very, very deep character flaw on Letterman’s part.  In turn, the fact that NOW is ignoring this egregious character flaw on the part of Letterman points to an equally deep moral flaw on the part of NOW’s constituents.

As Dr. Laura Schlessinger observed in her opening monologue during the first hour: the David Letterman audience should have stood up and walked out.  Why?  Because regardless of our differences in political leanings “we should all be able to agree that it is not funny to attack somebody else’s kid”. Listen Here: dl-courage.

Of course, out of a concern not to be seen as being on the wrong side because they agree with her, many people will disagree with Dr. Laura Schlessinger’s remarks just because the remarks come from her.  Alas, Dr. Laura Schlessinger’s very point is that it is precisely this attitude that is one of the factors that explain an absence of courage in society.  Just as the wrong of murder has nothing whatsoever to do with political leanings, it is equally true that the wrong of attacking someone’s child has nothing whatsoever to do with political leaning.  But one would not know that from either David Letterman’s despicable remarks about Palin’s daughter or the reaction of the audience to his despicable remarks. 

Evil cascades along riding the waves of our silence. 

The very idea of burning a gay novel is far more silly and absurd than any reasonable opposition that a group of Christian fundamentalists might have to such a novel.  And it really is a pity that this truth is lost on a group of Christians in the state of Wisconsin.  They want to burn a gay novel—Francesca Lia Block’s Baby Be-Bop—which they regard as explicitly vulgar.  Now, as it happens I have wondered why these very same Christians did not become equally distraught upon learning about the website HolyWesternEmpire.Org that was maintained by James W. von Brunn (This site has since been shut down, no thanks to the public outcry of Christians as such.  However, for an incomplete version of the home-page of the website, obtained from the Google cache files, click here.)  

At any rate, the point is that these Wisconsin Christians claim to be concerned with the destruction of the fabric of society; and it is surely arguable that, in his own inimitable way, Brunn has also been very much contributing to the destruction of the fabric of society, albeit in an ever so different way.

I mean if the principle for getting utterly irate and taking a public stand is that a given practice or item is contributing to the destruction of society, then the simple fact of the matter is that there is no shortage of things to get irate about.

Now, of course, I understand all too well that no one can be concerned with everything at once.  Pursuing some concerns well and effectively invariably means leaving aside other equally important concerns.  

Just so, it is not somewhat revealing when Christians fundamentalists who claim to be concerned with righteous behavior generally seem to become particularly agitated only with regard to the issue of gay sex?  Why?  Because it is not even remotely plausible that Christians could think that gay sex is the only issue in the world that needs to be forcefully addressed.  What is more the biblical condemnation of gay sex does not seem to place it at the very top of the list morally despicable wrongs.  As I have indicated, Brunn’s moral behavior is certainly objectionable.  Yet, we do not see that Christian groups have, in any very public way, gone after him and folks like him.  

No one reading the biblical texts could reasonably think that the following conclusion is warranted: If there is one kind of behavior more than any other that must stopped it is homosexual behavior.  Yet, the way some Christians behave—the folks in Wisconsin being a case in point—one would think that it is precisely this conception of wrongdoing that is fully warranted by a fair and judicious reading of the biblical text.

It will be noticed that I have arrived at this conclusion not by defending homosexuality.  I have in fact done no such thing.  And while that may bother some, it is worth noting that I have arrived at my cogent criticism of Christian fundamentalists (those in Wisconsin, in particular) simply by observing that whatever else is true the obsession with homosexuality as a wrong, as if it were the most fundamental of wrongs, that we find on the part of Christians is surely misplaced, given what one actually finds in the biblical text itself.  

The very point here is show just how much Christian fundamentalists likes these folks in Wisconsin are open to serious moral criticism by their behavior without ever once providing an argument in defense of homosexuality.   

It is often extremely useful to see what actually follows if one concedes the essential premise.  For instance, I have claimed that it is simply not plausible to hold that homosexuality is the most egregious of moral wrongs.  Between homosexuality and child sexual abuse, surely child sexual abuse is the greater moral wrong; and if Christian fundamentalists—the folks in Wisconsin, say—could only eliminate one of these, clearly it is child sexual abuse that they should aim to eliminate.  This, of course, will include criticizing some homosexuals, but it will also include criticizing lots and lots and lots of heterosexuals.  

There is no better evidence of that a person or even a group of persons have a warped mentality in some respect than that they engage in self-defeating behavior.  But for the silliness of these Wisconsin Christians most people would probably never have heard of Francesca Lia Block’s Baby Be-Bop.  Not so, now.  Thanks to the silly self-righteousness of these Wisconsin Christians, the book now enjoys a publicity that it would never have otherwise received.  And surely they have to know that no judge is going to rule that it is permissible for them to burn the book.  

No judge should deliver that ruling, whatever a judge’s views about the morality of homosexuality might be.  Lots and lots of immoral behaviors are quite permissible.  When a married person has a sexual liaison this is immoral and indeed it can be grounds for divorce.  However, the sexual liaison itself is not illegal.  No married person can be put in jail or subject to a legal fine on account of having a sexual liaison.  It is not even grounds for dismissal.  The very idea of a judge ruling that it is permissible to burn Francesca Lia Block’s Baby Be-Bop is at best an amusing fantasy and at worse the sign of a delusion.  And once more: It is inconceivable that these Wisconsin Christians do not know this.

Finally in this regard: It does not take genius to grasp that gays do not have a monopoly on vulgar sexual behavior.  Accordingly, there is no reason to focus upon vulgar sexual behavior by gays more so than vulgar sexual behavior by straights.  What is more, given the importance that Christian fundamentalists attach to female modesty, it really is not possible for them to argue that vulgar sexual behavior by straights is less morally objectionable.  They have to say that the woman is not respecting herself and the man is not respecting the woman.  So, we still have two people acting vulgarly, according to Christian fundamentalists, though ne’er a gay person is involved.

All that I have said in the preceding paragraphs is so patently obvious that it is mind-boggling that these Christian fundamentals of Wisconsin could be so myopic in their thinking as to not see the utter foolishness of their behavior and legal request.  In this regard, then, I am reminded of a biblical passage that they would do well to read and reflect upon; for they have done more to make themselves look silly and foolish than anything that gays might have been able to accomplish had this been the aim of gays.  It would seem that these Wisconsin Christian fundamentalists suffer from being more than a little full of themselves, which in turn gives Christianity a bad name.  Here is the biblical passage that lends some credence to that assessment:

Pride goeth before destruction,
and an haughty spirit before a fall

(Proverbs 16:18)

Paying students to do well in school is rather like paying for sex.  That no doubt seems crass.  Alas, I think the analogy is right on point.  To have a regular habit of paying for sex is to forge the wrong kind of association between sex and money.  Sex cannot possibly have the kind of affirmation that it should have if it is only via the exchange of money that a person has sex.  No amount of money can make sex an expression love.

Paying students to excel in school forges the wrong kind of associations with respect to excellence and, in so doing, pay students to excel in the classroom gives rise to the wrong kind of character formation.  There is something absolutely extraordinary about taking pride in the fact that one has excelled in a given task.  And when learning is at its best, this is precisely what happens.  In turn, taking pride in what one does is a character trait that will serve a person well for the rest of her or his life, and in every aspect of her or his life.  It will get a person through the good times and the bad times.  It will incline individuals to put their best foot forward whether everyone is being wonderfully supportive or woefully discouraging. 

There is nothing on this earth that can compete with or take the place of a person taking pride in the work that she or he does. 

Imagine paying some to dress in a way that is becoming.  This borders on being ludicrous precisely because what we suppose is that we should take enough pride in our appearances that we are naturally inclined to dress in a way that is becoming.  Clearly, something has gone terribly wrong if a person needs the incentive of money to dress in a becoming way. 

Learning is one thing.  Performing a service is quite another.  An individual can rightly demand to be paid well if she or he performances an important service well.  Yet precisely what one wants, of course, is an individual who will perform well the services for which he is paid well even if he can get away with doing a rather poor job. 

I take pride in being able to engage my class of 400 students my course Ethics and Value Theory.  It pleases me greatly to see the innovations that I have introduced into the classroom.  It is not my salary that has given rise to those innovations, but the pride that I take in my teaching. 

What we want is a world in which children take delight in learning and in being able to think of novel ways in which to do things.  We want a world in which that kind of self-motivation is a defining feature of the character of the lives of children.  Quite simply, paying children to excel is not the way to achieve that end. 

To suppose otherwise is to labor under a delusion.  It is to ignore the difference between results and motivation.  What is more, it is to pretend that an unsavory motivation for achieving excellence in learning can be or become a salutary one. 

People point to the success of the program by drawing attention to how much more students in pay-for-learning programs are motivated to learn.  Really?  How exactly do they distinguish between those who are motivated to learn and those who are simply motivated obtain money? 

It would be quite a testimony in favor of pay-for-learning programs if it could be pointed out that after a semester or year in such a program, children forget all about the money and fully take delight in the pursuit of intellectual excellence for its own sake.  It is so obvious that this sort of confirmation is needed that the failure to look for it stands as formidable evidence that those who run pay-for-learning programs are delusional in their assessment of its positive benefits. 

Quite simply, how could they possibly know that pay-for-learning programs are giving rise to the right sort of character development in the absence of a sustained committed to excellence on the part of students who were once in such a program but no longer are.  There is simply no other result that can possibly speak to the success of pay-for-learning programs. 

There is a truth that has stood the test of time, namely that money cannot buy love.  This truth applies with no less force to the ideal of taking pride in being excellent.  This should not surprise anyone.  Love can only come from the heart.  It is no less true that taking pride in being excellent can only come from the heart. 

There is this difference, though.  Love is a gift that we first give to another.  A commitment to excellence is a gift that we first give to ourselves.  If this is last point is right, then paying students to learn is surely self-defeating.  For the practice cultivates a dependence upon the other precisely where what one wants is the absence of such a dependence. 

I am not one who is in love with all the ways of the past.  Yet, we should not ignore the lessons that the past have taught us.  And one thing that we know is that in the past hundreds of thousands of students have excelled in the classroom without any money whatsoever being offered as an incentive.  That is an indisputable fact.  This tells us that something rather fundamental has changed for the worse—and not merely that something has changed. 

We would do well to identify what that change for the worse is rather than to entertain the foolish and implausible idea that it is simply the case that the times have change and money will make it all better.  We know that this line of thought is just so much nonsense because we know that excellence in character has never had money as its foundation; and it is an incontrovertible truth that a commitment to excellence in learning is none other than an aspect of having an excellent character. 

How about some tasty human fetus stew?  I have met many a liberal on abortion who insists that the fetus is not really a person.  However, I have never met one who has maintained that it would perfectly acceptable morally—since on the liberal view the fetus is not a human being—to consume the fetus as a source of food and nourishment.  Alas, the question is why not?  Animal flesh is eaten all the time; and since the human fetus is claimed by liberals not to be a person, then why cannot it not be eaten as a form of animal flesh?  My raising this question is not an indication of my having become a morally demented individual. 

Rather, I have raised the question because precisely what has been reported in the Seoul Times (9 June 2009) is that in China the human fetus is being served as a form of nourishment.  The article claims that in China baby herbal soup is held to “increase overall health and stamina and the power of sexual performance in particular”. 

Now, the observation that I wish to make is the liberals on abortion are in no position to criticize the practice in China of consuming the human fetus for food.  Why?  Because liberals on abortion insist that the fetus does not constitute a human being, and so has no moral standing at all as a human being.  By this line of reasoning, eating a human fetus can be no more morally objectionable than eating dog or snake or horse or snails.  I may not be able to stand eating such creatures, but I cannot on moral grounds object to anyone else doing so.  This holds even for dogs; for surely there is no moral difference between dogs and pigs; and the consumption of pig is highly savored. 

This of example of the fetus being used as food in China brings into sharp relief the importance of thinking through the consequences of what we advocate.  Liberals have been so anxious to insist that abortion is justified that they have pretty much denied commonsense in order to achieve that outcome.   

It will be remembered that the liberal view on abortion is not simply that there are circumstances when abortion is permissible.  Rather, liberals have maintained that in effect abortion upon demand is justified; and this move has required liberals to take the stance that the fetus has no status at all as a human being.  From this stance, it follows that that there would be nothing at all morally wrong with a woman who aborted a fetus then turning around and stuffing the fetus in order to use it as a form of decoration in her home.  

To my knowledge, no liberal has ever suggested such a thing.  The point, however, is that no liberal is in the position to criticize a woman who so behaves.  And, of course, if stuffing a fetus for home decoration is morally acceptable, then surely there can be no moral grounds for objecting to eating the fetus.  The most that one can say is that there are prudential grounds for not doing so.  But then prudence as such is not thought to fall under the provenance of morality, as the cases of over-eating and spending beyond our means make abundantly clear. 

Now, if the practice in China of eating the human fetus is without qualification morally horrendous, then something very, very disturbing follows, namely that the practice of abortion as liberals conceive of it does indeed constitute something akin to genocide, as conservatives have in fact claimed.  To be sure, no particular race or ethnic group is targeted.  Yet, a class of people who in the most fundamental respects are identical is in fact targeted.  This class of people is targeted not in the sense that there is a willful effort on the part of the state to kill them, but in the sense that the members of this class have no moral standing if the woman who is carrying the fetus should decide to kill it. 

The parallel here to American Slavery is rather poignant: Although there was no requirement to kill slaves, slaves had no moral standing at all if a slave owner decided to do just that.  (As an aside, the Holocaust was a case of genocide, namely the deliberate aim to eradicate a group of people off the face of the earth.  Neither abortion nor American Slavery has ever been about doing that.)

In objecting to American Slavery, the following very simple moral principle was fundamental: The rights and liberty of whites does not take precedent over the rights and liberty of blacks.

Thus with respect to the fetus, the question that forcefully presents itself is the following: Do the rights and liberty of women take precedent over the rights and liberty of the fetus?  The case of fetus consumption in China makes it manifestly clear that an affirmative answer to this question has morally disastrous moral consequences. 

The abortion debate dramatically reveals the ability of human beings to justify any view that suits their interests, and so to that end to deny the incontrovertible facts of life.  The very idea that abortion can, at once, be justified upon-demand even though a third party commits murder should he kill a woman’s unborn fetus (without her permission?) ought to have made it abundantly clear that the liberal view of abortion is incoherent.  After all, whether a fetus has a right to life surely cannot be said to turn upon simply the fact that the pregnant woman in question wants the fetus to live or not. 

In the name of ideology, though, liberals have been more than willing to pass over the aforementioned inconsistency.  Well, China has offered liberals another opportunity to reflect upon their views about abortion.  It should be very interesting, indeed, to see what liberals come up with this time. 

In order to be consistent in their inconsistency, the response of liberals to China has to be the following:

Why, of course, any woman can offer her fetus for the ingredients of a meal.  She may of her own volition go to an abortion clinic in order to arrange such a thing.  It is just that no one can force her to offer her fetus as one of the ingredients for a delicious—or, for that matter, disgusting—meal.

What is going on in China makes it clear that the time has come to embrace the right moral conception of consistency with regard to the fetus; and that consistency cannot be that the fetus is nothing more than a clump of cells.  For it is precisely that conception of the fetus that makes the morally abhorrent practice of human fetus conception in China one which liberals cannot even begin to criticize. 

Rape and Respect are as compatible with one another as ice and fire.  So when a woman who was repeatedly raped should maintain that she was nonetheless respected by her rapists, we know that something terrible has to be wrong.  Even if we—and notice that I am saying: even if—we can make sense of a woman “asking for it”, what is surely false, nonetheless, is that she has been shown any respect.  A rapist has no regard for the feelings of the woman whom he is raping.  His only concern is to impose his will upon her.  And there is simply no way to turn that into an expression of respect on his part for his victim.

Well, an instance of the very incongruity that I have just described has been exhibited by the Dutch journalist Joanie de Rijke.  She was serially raped for 6 days by a group of Taliban individuals; and her claim regarding them is the following: “I would put things in perspective, the Taliban are not moral monsters”.  Indeed, her very claim is that rape and respect can exist side-by-side, stating: “It’s not black and white. These things can exist side by side.”

In view of these remarks, Joanie de Rijke warns people not to assume that she is suffering from what is known as the Stockholm syndrome.  This is when a victim comes to identify with very the individuals who have subject her or him to egregious wrongdoing.   

Well, clearly she is suffering from something. And the general silence to her utterly absurd claim that rape and respect can exist side-by-side roundly supports Geert Wilders observation that she and Liberals are largely suffering from something. 

Imagine a woman in the United States claiming that her husband respects her although he routinely beats her.  Why, every feminist in the country would be up in arms, insisting that such a woman has a sense of false consciousness.  And if the media would dare to take such a woman seriously, surely there would be protests.  And you know, my sympathies are with the feminists here.  And that, alas, is just the problem.

What Joanie de Rijke has claimed is simply morally untenable.  Yet, there has been no outcry from feminists in the Netherlands.  Nor have feminists in the United States, or Europe generally, expressed their revulsion to what de Rijke has said.  A Google search does not turn up anything by way of feminist protests. 

This brings me to Geert Wilder.  He is “causing trouble” because he is daring to speak the truth.  The claims of Joanie de Rijke and the silence of Liberals in response to her claims are simply too revealing here. 

Because I tend to be so conservative that I am radical, I am sure that there is much that I do not understand.  You should know, though, that I have always drawn a completely immutable line in the sand with regard to rape.  There are no excuses for it.  And if a man thought he was having consensual sex only to hear a woman’s plea to stop or he hears none of the sounds that indicative of pleasure on her part, then I hold that he needs to stop.  There are no “free passes” when it comes to rape.  There is no story that one can tell that makes rape remotely understandable, let alone compatible with any measure of respect. 

Every feminist on this planet ought to have reacted in precisely this way to Joanie de Rijke’s horrendously absurd claims.  In general, there should be a widespread outcry against her.  There is none in the Netherlands; there is none in Europe; there is none in North America. 

This gets to the heart of the problem with Liberalism.  They seem to have a penchant for finding a way to excuse one another even when a paradigm wrong, by their very own standards, has been committed.  I do not think for a moment that Conservatives are perfect.  Of course, they are not.  However, they seem much better at towing the line in the case of what they regard as paradigm wrongs.  So, for example, when the married Larry Craig and former Republican politician exhibited (what to all the world appears to be) explicitly homosexual behavior in an airport men’s room, Conservatives did not rush to defend him or to make excuses for him.  Craig had crossed the line in terms of one of the fundamental values of the Republican Party.  Even if it is possible for Republicans to look the other way regarding homosexuality, a married man simply has no business pursuing homosexual interests. 

In effect, Joanie de Rijke crossed the line in the other direction by insisting that the people who serially raped her were not only not moral monsters, but they respected her. 

Geert Wilders’ point—a point which is causing much an uproar in the Netherlands—is that Liberals are more interesting in accommodating the Taliban than in standing by the fundamental principles which they, the Liberals, espouse. 

Joanie de Rijke has presented this truth on a silver platter to Wilders. 

I never thought that I would live to see the day when (i) a woman who has been serially raped would claim that those who did such a thing to her nonetheless respected her and, moreover, (ii) there would be nothing resembling a public outcry on account of such a claim.  Even in an era when women were sometimes accused of “asking for it”, no one thought to claim that the man who committed the act of rape showed the woman any respect.  Against the backdrop of Joanie de Rijke making just such a claim and the deafening silence by Liberals, only the angels of the Lord could give Wilders’ charge against Liberals greater credibility. 

More pointedly, Wilders is absolutely right in noting that insofar as Liberals can always find a way to excuse Islamic radicals, then indeed they suffer from none other than the Stockholm syndrome itself.  Either that, or something very much like it. 

It is perhaps a mistake to say that Joanie de Rijke is an embarrassment to feminism and Liberals.  She is, however, a profound embarrassment to the ideal that all women should be respected and, furthermore, every man should conduct himself accordingly.  The Taliban is not the exception to the rule here; for there are no exceptions to this moral precept. 

In the great debate regarding liberty, two of the greatest minds in intellectual thought‑‑namely Plato and John Stuart Mill‑‑are odds with one another.  Plato privileged moral excellence above liberty.  John Stuart Mill held that the exercise of liberty was necessary for the affirmation of the humanity of each individual.  Mill, of course, was very much committed to excellence.  It is just that he thought that it was by way of liberty that excellence was best achieved. 

Plato, it will be recalled that held that a just society needed to be governed by a Philosopher-King. Thus, Plato had little confidence that general moral decency would be sustained by the individual members of society in the absence of regular prodding to that effect by a higher moral authority. 

Mill, on the other hand, maintained that there is no higher moral authority—at least not one that takes the form of a homo sapien.  What is more, he assumed that human beings would naturally learn from their own mistakes and the mistakes of their fellow human beings.  Finally, in this vein, he thought that self-discipline would be anchored in this learning.

The advent of modern technology would suggest that Plato was right and that Mill was quite mistaken.  Consider, for instance, the phenomenon of young teenagers sexting (that is, sending sexually provocative (even nude) pictures of themselves via their cell phone). 

With Plato, things would be quite simple: sexting would simply not be allowed.  End of story.  Cell phones used by adolescents would simply not be able to send pictures.  With Mill, things are not so obvious.  The harm that children suffer on account of sexting would have to be properly identified and so forth, since sexting does not constitute a form of physical violence. 

Now, it is conceivable that Mill would side with Plato because, after all, adolescents are minors.  But what is precisely the point here is that with Plato sexting would clearly not be allowed, whereas with Mill this would open to debate.

In general, technology raises the issue of self-discipline.  And one thing seems to be abundantly clear, namely that morality flounders in the absence of self-discipline,  Plato was on to this truth; and held that society must do what is necessary in order to insure that self-discipline generally prevails in society; otherwise, a society had no chance of being just.

It is here that Mill and Plato part company.  Mill’s theory of government does not allow for the possibility that society may move to protect the moral character individuals.  The most that society may do is protect citizens from physical harm and, perhaps, certain forms of egregious psychological harms tied to threats.  In particular, Mill is very clear that society is not entitled to protect individuals from themselves; and from this it follows straightaway that, on Mill’s view, society has no right to cultivate self-discipline in its citizens. 

Accordingly, Mill’s theory of society and the individual cannot respond to the challenge to self-discipline occasioned by technology, whereas Plato’s theory can.

Of course, we tend to find repulsive the idea of a philosopher king.  And one reason for why we are repulsed by the idea is that we do not think for a moment that, with respect to being moral, any human being is in some fundamental way constitutionally superior to any other human being.  That is, we reject the very premise of Plato’s theoretical edifice.  Perhaps it is the rejection of this premise that was behind Mill’s thinking.

But let us engage in a thought experiment momentarily.  Suppose that we should have the option to choose between two paths.  One is the Platonic one; the other is the Millian one.  Which would we choose?  Would we prefer morality to freedom?  Or, would we prefer freedom to morality? 

One obvious response is that this is surely a false dichotomy, because certainly there is no incompatibility between being free and being moral.  The real question, though, is whether we would be willing to give up some freedom in order to have the moral excellence of which Plato spoke.  For while it is certainly true that there are those who freely make excellence to the highest degree there mode of living, what we know beyond any shadow of doubt is that most do not so choose to live. 

Alas, what is striking is that most think that we would be worse off if we traded freedom for moral excellence.  The obvious question, though, is: In what sense would be worse off?  And to that obvious question, there is no obvious answer.